The hit TV show Pluribus featured a scene in a Norwegian ice hotel where guests are assured that once you get used to it, their room is quite cozy, and uses an apt Norwegian idiom describing how they’ll feel: som plommen i egget, or fitting “like a...
When your server brings food to the table and inquires as to who ordered which dish, that’s informally known in the restaurant biz as auctioning. If your meal is delayed because the person who took your order forgot about it, that’s called a...
Candace from Memphis, Tennessee, wonders about the phrase You’re eating me out of house and home. The emphatic doublet house and home is part of a long tradition that includes scared out of house and home and chased out of house and home. Even...
Yasha, who grew up speaking Russian, recalls phrase used to comfort a child after a small mishap like a skinned knee. The phrase translates as “It will heal in time for the wedding,” and Yasha had assumed it was solely Slavic. So he was surprised to...
Jane Alberdeston is a poet who lives in Norfolk, Virginia, but she’s originally from Puerto Rico, and notes that in the capital of Puerto Rico, San Juan, there’s a famous statue of Christopher Columbus with his finger pointing toward the...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a puzzle that’s full of misspellings–only on purpose. Given a definition, you have to provide the common incorrect spelling. For example, how would you misspell the word defined by the following? “A confection made from...
